message(3tk)						       Tk Built-In Commands						      message(3tk)

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NAME

       message - Create and manipulate message widgets

SYNOPSIS

       message pathName ?options?

STANDARD OPTIONS

       -anchor		     -background	  -borderwidth
       -cursor		     -font		  -foreground
       -highlightbackground  -highlightcolor	  -highlightthickness
       -padx		     -pady		  -relief
       -takefocus	     -text		  -textvariable

       See the options manual entry for details on the standard options.

WIDGET-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
       Command-Line Name:-aspect
       Database Name:  aspect
       Database Class: Aspect

	      Specifies  a  non-negative  integer  value  indicating  desired  aspect  ratio  for  the	text.	The  aspect  ratio is specified as
	      100*width/height.  100 means the text should be as wide as it is tall, 200 means the text should be twice as wide as it is tall,	50
	      means  the text should be twice as tall as it is wide, and so on.  Used to choose line length for text if width option is not speci-
	      fied.  Defaults to 150.

       Command-Line Name:-justify
       Database Name:  justify
       Database Class: Justify

	      Specifies how to justify lines of text.  Must be one of left, center, or right.  Defaults to left.  This option works together  with
	      the  anchor,  aspect,  padX, padY, and width options to provide a variety of arrangements of the text within the window.	The aspect
	      and width options determine the amount of screen space needed to display the text.  The anchor, padX,  and  padY	options  determine
	      where  this  rectangular	area is displayed within the widget's window, and the justify option determines how each line is displayed
	      within that rectangular region.  For example, suppose anchor is e and justify is left, and that the message window  is  much  larger
	      than  needed  for  the  text.   The text will be displayed so that the left edges of all the lines line up and the right edge of the
	      longest line is padX from the right side of the window;  the entire text block will be centered in the vertical span of the window.

       Command-Line Name:-width
       Database Name:  width
       Database Class: Width

	      Specifies the length of lines in the window.  The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels.  If this option has  a
	      value  greater  than  zero  then the aspect option is ignored and the width option determines the line length.  If this option has a
	      value less than or equal to zero, then the aspect option determines the line length.
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DESCRIPTION

       The message command creates a new window (given by the pathName argument)  and  makes  it  into	a  message  widget.   Additional  options,
       described  above,  may  be  specified on the command line or in the option database to configure aspects of the message such as its colors,
       font, text, and initial relief.	The message command returns its pathName argument.  At the time this command is invoked,  there  must  not
       exist a window named pathName, but pathName's parent must exist.

       A  message  is  a widget that displays a textual string.  A message widget has three special features.  First, it breaks up its string into
       lines in order to produce a given aspect ratio for the window.  The line breaks are chosen at word boundaries  wherever	possible  (if  not
       even  a	single	word  would  fit  on  a line, then the word will be split across lines).  Newline characters in the string will force line
       breaks;	they can be used, for example, to leave blank lines in the display.

       The second feature of a message widget is justification.  The text may be displayed left-justified (each line starts at the  left  side	of
       the window), centered on a line-by-line basis, or right-justified (each line ends at the right side of the window).

       The  third  feature  of	a  message widget is that it handles control characters and non-printing characters specially.	Tab characters are
       replaced with enough blank space to line up on the next 8-character boundary.  Newlines cause line breaks.  Other control characters (ASCII
       code less than 0x20) and characters not defined in the font are displayed as a four-character sequence xhh where hh is the two-digit hexa-
       decimal number corresponding to the character.	In  the  unusual  case	where  the  font  does	not  contain  all  of  the  characters	in
       "0123456789abcdefx" then control characters and undefined characters are not displayed at all.

WIDGET COMMAND

       The message command creates a new Tcl command whose name is pathName.  This command may be used to invoke various operations on the widget.
       It has the following general form:
	      pathName option ?arg arg ...?
       Option and the args determine the exact behavior of the command.  The following commands are possible for message widgets:

       pathName cget option
	      Returns the current value of the configuration option given by option.  Option may have any of the values accepted  by  the  message
	      command.

       pathName configure ?option? ?value option value ...?
	      Query  or modify the configuration options of the widget.  If no option is specified, returns a list describing all of the available
	      options for pathName (see Tk_ConfigureInfo for information on the format of this list).  If option is specified with no value,  then
	      the  command  returns  a list describing the one named option (this list will be identical to the corresponding sublist of the value
	      returned if no option is specified).  If one or more option-value pairs are specified, then the command modifies	the  given  widget
	      option(s) to have the given value(s);  in this case the command returns an empty string.	Option may have any of the values accepted
	      by the message command.

DEFAULT BINDINGS

       When a new message is created, it has no default event bindings: messages are intended for output purposes only.

BUGS

       Tabs do not work very well with text that is centered or right-justified.  The most common result is that the line is justified wrong.

SEE ALSO

       label(3tk)

KEYWORDS

       message, widget

Tk									4.0							      message(3tk)